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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Appointments: January 31, 1985Today let me drink four glasses of clean-tasting water,three of milk.Let me eat two eggs over easy,two triple-decker peanut butter and applesauce sandwiches,one apple,one thermos of Top Ramen.Let me remember my vitamin pill.Let me do my back exercises morning and evening.I must shave.I must remember to tape the reading of Silas Marner on KPFA so I can listen to it in the truck.I must walk the dog three times.Today, let me remember his flea powder. And the pill for his prostate.Give me time to read the newspaper,swim fifty-two laps, work eight hours for somebody somewhere,get the mail,write one poem,eat dinner with my family,read stories to three children.Let me enjoy a glass of port before bed (just like my grandfather used to do).Let me hear about your day.I will tell about mineand how it differed from the plan.Maybe we can laughif it wasn’t too bad.I will brush my teeth with the electric toothbrush.I’ll floss with Johnson & Johnson Dentotape.I’ll pee.Of that I am absolutely certain.We’ll snuggle under the quilton the wavy waterbed.Please let no child wake usand we’ll sleep until dawn.

When going through my journals, I was surprised to find this poem, which is basically a snapshot of my life in 1985. Nowadays
I eat smaller meals and swim fewer laps. I drink beer instead of port,
and I floss with Oral B. I still enjoy a good snuggle.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Like
most beginning carpenters, I thought I would cut boards and whack nails
into them. I might even use a hand plane to shave a smooth curl from a
plank. Those are the symbols of carpentry: the hammer, the saw, the
plane.

What
a load of crap. As a beginning carpenter on a small construction crew,
I spent most of my time digging holes, mixing concrete, stapling
insulation, hanging drywall, cleaning up garbage. If I touched lumber,
it was to carry toxic rasty pressure-treated two-by-twelves from one
pile to another, load by muscle-weary load. As for hand planes, entire
houses got built without the use of one.On
a small crew, you do everything. You learn to like it, or at least to
tolerate. Except insulation. Does anybody enjoy handling fiberglass
batts? I accept digging holes or gathering garbage as part of the job.
Drywall can be pleasant in a mindless, big-muscle way, and you get
immediate, large results.One
surprise, though, was my changing relationship to concrete. Slowly
over the years concrete is something I've learned to respect. Perhaps
even love.

In my novel Clear Heart I wrote about my education
through the character of Abe, a high school graduate who takes a job as a
beginner on a construction crew to earn some money — and, his mother
hopes, to learn some discipline — before starting college at Princeton
in the Fall. Abe is me. (Actually, most of the carpenters in that
novel are some aspect of me at different ages and stages of my career.)
(Though I never went to Princeton.) (But then, Abe isn't too sure he
wants to go to Princeton, either.)

Here is Abe's first task on a construction site, guided by an old carpenter named Steamboat:

“You need to know,” Steamboat said. “What looks simple, ain’t.”And
what could look simpler than building a rectangle out of two-by-sixes,
then filling it with concrete? Abe noted the care Steamboat gave to all
the details: He shoveled the ground flat, a little deeper around the
perimeter, and then tamped it firm with his flat-soled boots. He made
sure the form was square and exactly the right distance from the edge of
the deck, measuring not once but twice. He leveled the boards with his
fingers by pushing dirt under one corner, scooping some away from
another, eye to the earth, butt to the air.

A little later, after pouring the concrete:

Steamboat
showed Abe how to strike off the top with a screed board, which was
just a regular old two-by-four, pulling it back and forth along the top
of the form in a sawing motion, cutting off the high spots, backing and
filling the low spots. With a running commentary all the while,
Steamboat seemed quite happy to be slopping concrete in dirt, practicing
a skill that until this moment Abe had never given a thought, much less
any respect.

Steamboat
showed Abe how to swing a wooden floater in circles, working all the
stone into the mix so they dropped below the surface, holding the
leading edge of the tool up slightly to keep it from plowing. The wet
concrete had an odd quality under Abe’s hands, feeling both solid in its
mass and grudgingly liquid on its surface, sort of bouncy, as the tool
swept over. There was magic the way the pebbles disappeared, as if the
floater was sucking smoothness from the mix.

That's right: magic.
I was surprised when I first wrote that word, but I knew instantly that
it was right. You can feel the mojo when you run a floater over
concrete. At least, if you have a certain personality. Which I seem to have.

Steamboat nodded toward the landing. “Lookin’ good,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Abe
liked saying sir. He knew he didn’t have to, it was a joke, but he
didn’t want to stop. He liked the ache in his muscles that would grow
into strength. He liked the smell of wet concrete. He liked this work—so
solid, so basic, so real.

On another day, Abe is involved in a larger pour of an entire raised foundation:

Abe
lugged rebar. Without asking questions, he listened and absorbed the
meaning and use of a doughboy, waler, pier cage, stirrup. He
discovered—with stunning tension in his shoulders, fingers, and back—the
difference in weight and stiffness between grade 40 #4 rebar and grade
60 #5. He saw the meticulous and muscle-straining preparation for what
would become invisible, unbeautiful, mostly buried, and taken for
granted. As Steamboat had said—and he seemed to mean it as an essential
Law of Life and Human Development—Don’t fork up the foundation.

One
of the forms breaks, and for a few minutes Abe is nearly Hoffaed, as
they call it — drowned under concrete. He washes himself off with a
hose and then is told he can go home for the rest of the day, but
instead he returns to help the crew:

All
the while, amidst the hard work and the pain and shock of nearly being
buried alive, with heightened senses Abe was keenly aware of the smell
of curing concrete. It was a wet and yet oddly dusty odor. It was a
scent of possibility, of something you could briefly shape with tools,
of impending permanence. Abe loved that smell: a magic force, so
solid and quiet and strong. Concrete, he realized, has dignity. Maybe
Abe had a law, his first, his very own: Honor concrete. Honor it, at
least, until you come at it with a demo hammer.

There,
I used that word again: magic. Maybe I'm alone in this. Or maybe
you've felt it, too. Maybe you've run a floater over concrete; maybe
you, too, have sensed the mojo under your fingertips as the fragrance
of cement — wet and yet oddly dusty — embeds in your memory like the
bouquet of a fine wine.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

I love this story: a handyman installed a water heater, didn't get
paid by the landlord, then repossessed the heater. The son of a tenant
beat up the handyman, forced him to perform additional work, then
kidnapped him. After kidnapping the handyman, the kidnapper stopped for
gas at a minimart and got into an argument with the cashier about a bag
of trail mix. While they argued, the handyman escaped. And that's not
even the weird part...

It's all here, in a hilarious column by Scott Herhold of the San Jose Mercury News.

Reminds me of a dispute I had over a recirculating pump for a water heater: The Bill (Part Two). I actually tried to kill a client by giving him a heart attack.

People, please pay your handymen. We get a little upset when we feel we're being stiffed.